not every day has a bonfire

A bonfire in August darkness, fireworks and a million lights around the bay. Small cabins glowing with candlelight, filled with people who are feasting on snacks and laughing at bad jokes. All around, the peace of forest and sea.

Every day should be like this.

there's poetry and there's porridge

Still don't want to leave my tiny room in the summer paradise that is now yielding to autumn weather. I huddle by the fireplace, listen to my favourite music and stare out over a grey sea and a few rain-pelted birch and alder trees.

Two of the islands I can see from here are poetically called (translated from the local language) Isle of Shadows and Isle of Grey Souls. The third one is named Porridge Island. What happened there?

marry me

"marry me.
let’s spend our week nights eating cereal on the floor
when there is a perfectly fine table behind us.
we can go to the movies and sit in the back row
just to make out like kids falling in love for the first time.

marry me.
we’ll paint the rooms of our house
and get more paint on us than the walls.
we can hold hands and go to parties we end up
ditching to drink wine out of the bottle in the bathtub.

marry me.
and slow dance with me in our bedroom
with an unmade bed and candles on the nightstand.
let me love you forever.
marry me."

(whispering bones, Tumblr)

soul landscape

I'm surrounded by dark skies, sea and candles, a soul landscape of rest.

I will light a fire and go to sleep with a dog next to me, and I will delay autumn for a little while still.

pilates and a vanilla quilt

A quilted blanket is hung up to dry in the cramped confines of my flat, near a scented candle so it will smell of vanilla.

Songs from my past are playing on my phone while I cut tomatoes and goat's cheese. I'm making pie and find the heat of the oven comforting, like a hearth fire. I seldom make real food but as summer darkens toward autumn I will light this hearthfire more often.

This autumn I will be doing pilates and foam rolling, stretching my body and getting to know it. There will be piano music again. And when body and soul are tired, I will lie down under a vanilla-scented quilt and rest.

eating cake in bed

"I am made up of bad habits. Consistent in how
I love boys who will never love me back.
Letting the phone go to voicemail when my
mother calls. Biting my nails bloody.
Wearing dresses when I should wear jeans.
Making my body small. Forgetting names
but not asking for them again. Maybe I should
have called. Maybe you should stop calling.
Maybe I should have remembered how you
take your coffee, your favorite band,
that you smoke a pack a day. Maybe I should
have apologized. If it’s any consolation,
my next birthday will be me eating cake in bed
and licking the icing off of my fingers alone."

(Kristina Haynes: "Bad Habits")

current inventory

There are invisible Pokémons all around my house and a cigarette stub in an empty flower pot. There is a finance minister in town and a frustration inside.

All my newfound energy is about to go into overdrive, nosedive and a crash.

peace in cheap rooms

“Cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
The less I needed,
the better I
felt.”

(Charles Bukowski: "Let It Enfold You")

the Irish saga: an academic enters the maze

The fairytale inn, a little Irish hotel in a hidden valley, is bursting with people on the evening I arrive.

I'm exhausted and shaking with adrenaline as I walk into my new life with no idea what to expect. Darkness has fallen on the May night outside but the inn is as merry as one would expect of a fairytale - lights, laughter and clinking glasses. The geography is confusing - I wander winding corridors with slanting floors before I find the hotel reception.

I am a twenty-seven-year-old woman who just days ago completed the last assignment for my Master's degree in English as a foreign language, back home in Finland. I have no experience whatsoever of hotels, unless you count a few unmemorable nights in cheap chain hotels during my travels. Nevertheless, here I am in an Irish hotel, hoping the job offer sent to me in an informal email is still valid. Hoping that my father's irate prediction, that I will end up chained to a brothel bed in a foreign country, is NOT valid.

I'm two days into my new freedom after a completed university education. My official graduation "ceremony" is still months away and will consist of me opening a boring envelope with my diploma inside, sent to me care of the hotel. I'm dizzy from the sudden transition from university life to working life - over a thousand miles and a lifestyle shift away.

I'm fresh off the plane and the bus, so exhausted that I'm leaning against my heavy suitcase. But it will be three hours before I get to fall into bed in my temporary staff accommodation. In that time, I will have experienced my first hour behind the reception desk, found my first friend - the chatty Canadian receptionist who will later lead me into so much trouble - and fallen in love with the red-haired chef who put together a simple spaghetti supper for me.

Before I fall asleep I look out from the window of my tiny room, somewhere deep inside the maze of corridors. A cobblestoned courtyard, the bright windows of a bar, a merry party. So this is Ireland?

like yellow paint, like dark-roast coffee

This summer is grey, like the clouds hiding the sun, like the cold sea.

It is yellow, like the paint shining in the can, spattering my fingers and my legs and the Nokia rubber boots that I inherited from my father.

It is red like the raspberries and wild strawberries I pick in the jungle in the bottom of the garden.

This summer smells like a thousand flowers and dark-roast coffee. It sounds like birds and silence.

This summer is cold but soothing.

the Irish saga: the white bus of a saint

My first sight of the country, coming in on the plane from Helsinki, is a patchwork of fields, one greener than the other. No trees, only hedges. It seems foreign and fantastical, like something out of the Enid Blyton books I read as a child.

Treading my way uncertainly through the airport, someone hands me a clementine and a smile.

I walk through sunny Dublin streets, hating the heavy suitcase I'm dragging after me. I find a beautiful park near the bus stop - the bus isn't due for several hours yet. This park has duck ponds, hedges and fragrant spring flowers. I stretch out on the grass with relief and stay there, half asleep, until the bus arrives. My longing to explore the strange city has been subdued by my tiredness, the suitcase and my anxiety for what lies ahead - a job I've never done before, an employer I've never met, a new life in a foreign country.

The bus doesn't look like the other city buses. It is completely white, with a graceful script adorning the side - the name of a saint. It is packed with both tourists and local commuters. It winds its way slowly through town, through leafy suburbs and into the countryside - climbing into the hills on narrow roads, past tiny villages and fields filled with sheep and cows. The road gets narrower, the landscape rougher and wilder. Hills turn into mountains.

I eavesdrop on a conversation in the bus. "You know, he always loved you," says a man to a woman. This fact seems a surprise to her - something she never knew, but wishes she knew. I marvel at the intimacy and gravity of this conversation, the first one I hear in Ireland. I don't think I would ever hear something like this on a bus at home.

Twilight in the mountains, and we arrive at last in the valley that is my destination. Shadows play with the last rays of the sun, the road dips sharply. Through the wild hawthorn hedges I glimpse a real mountain - steep, dangerous, beautifully offset against the evening sky. It takes my breath away. There are no mountains where I'm from. The bus comes to a final stop in a wooded valley, dark but with glittering lights from the windows of a fairytale inn.

I don't feel as if I'm in a foreign country. I'm in an alien world, an alternate universe. I gasp at the sensation of a free fall. Ireland, I'm in Ireland. God help me.

darling books: the only hotel you need in Dublin

"The walk to Room 105 was all too short. They reached it in seconds. Silently, Karl Brown took her key-card from Detta and opened the door. The room spread before them, dim and seductive in pale mushroomy light. Its red and black carpet was thick and soft, and its enormous bed, shaped like a medieval longship, beckoned them to its fluffy bosom. 'Try me!' called the sirens of the bed.

Detta turned a deaf ear to them, and so did he."

The two novels Finbar's Hotel and Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel (written by several authors, edited by D. Bolger) found me in Ireland and followed me home. These two books speak of heroes and villains and some very curious characters in a Dublin hotel. It doesn't get more Irish than this. Wonderful.

shakshuka and a Finnish summer

The weekend was spent at the summer cottage in the eclectic company of an 83-year-old woman, a 20-year-old boy and a poodle.

It involved a village party with a vintage boat race and salmon soup under the hot sun, poodle games, wild strawberries, evenings with everyone curled up in a corner of the same room with a book, and me improvising a shakshuka.

down in seagull town

Noodles at a café table in the market square. I'm sitting outdoors on a cloudy day and it's too chilly for summer but I love the market square. It has cobblestones. I love cobblestones - terrible for bicycle wheels and high heels but great for a sense of ancient European town.

I can smell the strawberries for sale at a market stand nearby. Seagulls are screeching and swarming around a homeless man who shares his sausage roll with them. Annoyed glances are thrown his way from shoppers and café patrons but the sight of the gulls is hilarious, lining up in a squabbling but dedicated semi-circle around the man.

Seagulls, strawberry sellers and not-great weather. My city in a nutshell, really.

howling

The eerie, ululating calls of a fox woke me last night.

I ponder Maslow's hierarchy of needs. My basic need for safety is not being met and it has nothing to do with spending my summer among foxes.

Inside, I'm howling too.

tools for a rainy day

Scratchy old blankets in Sixties' colours, scratched Gilmore Girls DVDs on the laptop, a packet of crisps and cheap wine.

between novels and eagles

Four days into my long summer holiday.

Four hundred pages into my eight-hundred-page fantasy novel that is guaranteed to sink me into blissful holiday mood.

Halfway through my first-week-of holiday restlessness.

The sun is undecidedly weaving in and out of clouds. Mornings are chilly dew, fragrance of clover, chittering wagtails. Afternoons are bare feet and coconut sunscreen. Evenings are huddling in a sweater in front of a fire, telling tall tales to family.

I have watered an oak, screamed "eagle!" and crawled on my stomach.

Further adventures await.

lions in her heart, a fire in her soul

Anxiety attacks - when you feel as if you're literally dying or going mad, or both, for no good reason. You can't breathe, can't think, and your heart is about to explode. I had attacks like these for a while last winter. Next to the death of my father, they were by far the worst experience I've ever had.

The strange thing about this crisis is that it brought a lot of things to my life, all of them good. I eat healthier food, exercise more, try to avoid stress, allow myself good things. But of all these necessary life changes, two stand out as by far the most effective:

1. I'm more open towards my friends. I ask for their help instead of stubbornly try to cope on my own. I share my weaknesses and get involved in their lives. I also went to therapy sessions with a professional. As a result, when I'm cold and lonely and panic is pressing in, the support of others is like a warm blanket to wrap myself in.

2. I realised, with the help of my therapist, that I set impossibly high standards for myself. This makes me harsh and judgemental towards myself, which creates stress that brought on the anxiety. I'm learning to be merciful. To change my negative self-talk to encouragement and kindness. To allow myself rest and recreation when I need it. To not conquer all the world in one week.

Now, six months later, I feel OK. I'm still taking the antidepressants a doctor prescribed when I begged for help but I will try weaning myself off them soon. Occasionally, very rarely now, I feel as if another attack might be lurking in the shadows but that I will be able to deal with it.

I know that I'm skirting dangerously close to burnout and exhaustion and that I must be careful not to burn my candle at both ends. I never even realised that this is what I do - I see myself as a laid-back, almost lazy person. But constant, negative self-criticism, fretting about all those dreams not yet fulfilled, and filling my waking time with information overload from social media - this can break me sooner than I thought.

I'm learning to listen to my body and my mind and give them what they need.

taught to be tiny

“As women, we are taught to be tiny. To have small bodies, to never be imposing. The ideal of our gender are thin and childlike, hairless and dainty. We are defined by our bodies; defined by our control over them. We are taught to obsess over our physicality and to be repulsed by our desires and intelligences. We are taught to walk scared late at night. We cradle our keys between our perfectly manicured fingers, walking gracefully like a baby antelope in a herd of lions. That our virginity defines our character. That I am a frigid bitch if I do not fuck him, and a dirty slut if I do.”

(Michelle K.: "The Truth About Growing Up a Woman")

boring day at the office

Meanwhile, in the garment industry, I dug through the office fridge for some butter. Behold my findings:

Ketchup
Antibiotics
Kahlua liqueur
Czech beer
Beets
Kippers
Anchovies
Sardelles
Ginger
Soy sauce
Snuff tobacco
Capers
Pomegranate-flavoured mineral water
Fig jam
Cranberry jam
Cranberry juice
Lactose-free milk
Barbecue sauce
Pickled cornichons
10 small packets of wasabi sauce
Container of something unknown with rice

There was no butter.